My Life in Pieces

By B.G. Armstrong

Author Barbara Gray Armstrong came of age during Jim Crow when the color line was clearly drawn and America was divided into black and white. Black people were denied rights and endured discrimination. In My Life in Pieces, she weaves together both personal and public events as an exploration of what it was like being black in America. In this m

• Language: English
• Publisher: LitPrime Solutions
• Release date: Feb 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887031040

B.G. Armstrong

B.G. ARMSTRONG is a wife, mother, and grandmother who lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia. A former educator and community volunteer, she enjoys the arts, Zumba, line dancing, and international travel. Armstrong has published in Woman's World Magazine. She is co-author of Shaking Off the Dust: Personal Narratives of Triumph.

Book preview

FC.jpg

LitPrime Solutions

21250 Hawthorne Blvd

Suite 500, Torrance, CA 90503

www.litprime.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2023 B.G. Armstrong. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by LitPrime Solutions 02/14/2023

ISBN: 979-8-88703-102-6(sc)

ISBN: 979-8-88703-103-3(hc)

ISBN: 979-8-88703-104-0(e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022922740

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by iStock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © iStock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

PART I: WHEN I WAS YOUNG AND LIFE WAS LONG

Introductionv

What’s In a Nameix

I Was The Help

Glorious Good Hair and Lovely Light Skin

School Daze

Fayette County Training School

Cobb Elementary School

Mt. Lebanon Elementary School

Morrow’s Grove Elementary School

Fayette County Training School

Burt High School

Big Mama’s House

Pearl Sr. High School

Lester High School

Lane College

Tennessee State University

University of South Alabama

Where Are You God and What Are You?

Get a Job!

PART II: GO BACK AND GET IT! SANKOFA

Gray - Hammond – Branch

From Young Slave to Oldest Minister in America

I Am My Brothers’ Keeper

Daddy’s Girl

From Slaves to Landowners

Dear Mommy

Part III: My Journey Home

My Journey Home

A Black Man in the White House261

Afterthought – My life in Pieces267

Introduction

My Life in Pieces

I started writing a memoir in 2010, inspired by a book review of The Help , a novel by Katherine Stockett. The story was set in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962. The reviewer Ann B. Jones, Ph.D., said she reluctantly read it, stating, I didn’t want to risk a plunge downward. Finally, however, she got over her initial response to the subject matter, took the plunge, and read the book. Her review was so interesting that it sent me to the bookstore immediately.

As I started reading the book, I was first repelled by Stockett’s use of dialect. I thought, How dare this white woman mock those black maids? It seemed like mockery; I wanted to lay aside the book. I didn’t. I took a deep breath and continued reading. The pages flew by, and I could not put it down.

After only a few pages, I realized that I was the help." I was inspired by this fictional tale of black maids and their relationships with the white women they worked for. So, I decided to write about my experience as a nanny and maid during that summer of 1962.

Once I started writing, memories flowed through situations I hadn’t thought of in many years. After I finished that essay, I began to recollect forgotten pieces of my childhood and youth and record them for posterity. I wanted my children and grandchildren to come to know and understand me through my early years and through the family, friends, and people I knew. My youth was spent in Tennessee—Memphis, Somerville, Clarksville, Nashville, and Jackson.

I believe that we are who we are not just due to the circumstance of our birth—what we inherit from our parents and ancestors, but that our personalities and characters are developed through our interactions and experiences with others. A particular situation or circumstance may define some lives; however, most are probably the sum of all that they have experienced, the pieces they have collected and fashioned into a life.

Often the people with the most important and inspiring stories rise out of the muck and mire of adversity. Unfortunately, I am not one of those, yet I have an American story. I was born and reared in the Jim Crow South less than 100 years after slavery ended with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation1863 and the 13th Amendment 1865. When I was born, black and white people lived parallel lives -- separate but unequal. Yet, black people struggled to rise from a legacy of Slavery and Reconstruction.

This book represents only a few pieces of my life and the lives of family members set in a momentous time in America. There are many more. Unfortunately, some will remain in the bin for lack of time and space. Others will be saved for another project. Still, others will be discarded.

I was young when black people were called colored or Nergo and endured much adversity, yet made gains and improved in some areas of life. Still, much more needed to be done before they could be fully empowered citizens.

I know how it is to live in a divided country with few rights when Black people living in the South were compelled to boycott, demonstrate, and march for the right to participate in the American way of life. As a result, many jobs, schools, and neighborhoods were off-limits. There were obstacles in every direction, and peaceful protests brought opposition from some white citizens. In contrast, some white people from the North came to join the demonstrations and assist in voter registration.

Students on college campuses took issue with how things were being done in America. Both black and white students revolted against the status quo. Many college uprisings took place, and some became violent. Amid the struggle for civil rights, young people were protesting the Vietnam War. Some didn’t see sense in going to war and killing people, the Viet Kong, for no reason they knew of; they said No when invited by Uncle Sam. Some fought in court; others fled the country. They became known as draft dodgers. The government required 18-year-old males to register for the military. I remember going to court to support a young man who refused to join the Army based on his religion as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. He won his case and did not have to enlist.

Though I was the age of many protestors, I was involved in marriage, raising children, and attending school. I participated in the boycotts of the 1960s, yet I put my activism -- marching and protesting off for a much later date. I marched to protest the Iraq War and joined the Women’s March of 2016 shortly after the presidential election.

Initially, I thought this book would be just for my children and family. Yet, after I began writing it, I felt that much of it was akin to the lives of other African Americans and maybe other Americans.

America is no longer black and white. It is all the shades of humanity. That diversity gives it richness. Immigrant cultures, traditions, cuisines, and celebrations have helped make this a great nation.

America has come a long way since the Jim Crow era, but as demonstrated recently, it has much further to go. People are losing their rights. Women have lost the right to safe and legal abortion, and marriage and LGBTQ+ rights are threatened, as are voting rights. Education is under attack as many books are being banned. American history, especially African American history, including slavery, is being attacked and rewritten.

Each of us has a story, and only we can tell it.

What’s In a Name

What is in a name? Does it carry any real meaning? Does it identify the bearer’s qualities, traits, or characteristics, suggesting an origin or destiny? For example, the darker skin brothers and sisters in America have had many names or designations, such as African, slave, enslaved person, Negro, mulatto, colored, black, Afro-American and African American, and more.

As I started this writing journey, I pondered what name I would use when writing about black American citizens of African heritage. My journey reaches back to slavery and before. Should I call the ancestors slaves? That was the designation given to them at that time. Using African American seemed strange since the owners considered slaves as property, not citizens, not even fully human.

This name game has been played for centuries and several times during my lifetime. My dilemma was which designation to use predominately. To me, African American is inaccurate when applied to black people before 1990. To use it would be tantamount to rewriting history. History should remain – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

In this book, I use all of the designations mentioned above for darker skin people in America. I don’t particularly appreciate thinking of the people brought here from Africa as slaves, as they were not. The masters enslaved them, i.e., subjugated, dominated, and sometimes raped, beat, bound, and chained them. They were Africans made into slaves to serve and enrich the lives of white people. The United States of America kept the institution of slavery longer than any other country.

Portuguese and Spaniards also enslaved Africans. They called them Negro, Spanish for black. After the Africans spent a few years in America, enslavers called the children whose black mothers they, the overseers, and other white men raped mulatto. After a few generations in America, more and more slaves were not black in skin color. Whites decided to call them colored. However, as time passed, black people didn’t like being called colored and returned to Negro. Somehow, Negro seemed stronger than colored. Yet, Negro did not last long.

In the 1960s, H. Rap Brown said, You must begin to define yourself; you must begin to define your Black self. We called ourselves Black, especially after James Brown sang, I’m Black and I’m Proud. We had slogans such as Black is beautiful and Black Power. Black is only a color. Since our ancestors came from Africa, rich in history, culture, and resources, let us embrace the continent’s riches. Afro-Americans? That was a good name for the hairstyle, but the people didn’t embrace it. Afri-Americans would have been better.

Since our ancestors were African and we were born in America, that makes us African American. However, I am not sure what makes us American. Is it adhering to the American Creed? We have had to fight for our right to vote, for jobs and fair wages, fair housing, and all privileges that other Americans took for granted. Some of our ancestors came from Europe, and others from the Native American Indian nations.

Jesse Jackson suggested, in a speech in 1990, that we refer to ourselves with the more fitting name, African-American. Jackson had read the poem I Can in Dr. Johnny Duncan’s Black History Calendar, published in 1986. Duncan saw a sign posted in a dark Georgia swamp while on an Army maneuver, which read, The last four letters in American spell xxiii MY LIFE IN PIECES I Can. Duncan later noticed that the last four letters in the word African also spell I Can. He wrote, The last four letters of my (African) heritage and my (American) Creed spell I Can! Therefore, we should credit Johnny Duncan and his poem for our present designation, African American.

I Was The Help

As far as I knew, White women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them, and Black women worked for them. -- Maya Angelou

I was not born to serve. However, no one told my mother that. That is why when she heard of a young woman who needed a nanny for her two-year-old daughter, she hurried and made sure I was first in line for the position. I had babysat a few times; I was good at it; therefore, Mommy was confident I could handle the job for three months.

When Mommy was a teen, Papa did not want her to do domestic work for whites; however, she didn’t have any qualms about such work. She was not partial to black or white. Her favorite color was green. She painted her living and dining rooms a soft mint green and her bedroom avocado. Her first car was a light olive green 1969 Ford. I can still remember the nubby feel of her moss green coat. Mommy lived for the new and fresh greens that signaled spring.

In later years, as I was going through Mommy’s things, I discovered a Gladiator composition book she used for a Maid’s Course in Home Economics. Her home economics teacher, Miss Fuqua, taught the twelfth grade girls how to work in white peoples’ homes. Mommy was eager to learn domestic work then because that was all that was available to her; she wanted to earn her own money. She worked on the family farm, but she received no money for that. Black women could work few places during the 1930s and 1940s. Domestic workers were always in great demand.

Mommy did not bother consulting me to see what my plans were for the summer. She decided the job was mine as soon as she heard about it. I had to pack away my summer plans as winter clothes. Mommy wanted me to earn money for clothing and things I would need for college. She was struggling just to pay household expenses. Therefore, I had to step up and grow up. That summer, Frankie Vali and The Four Seasons sang Big Girls Don’t Cry. I did not.

No matter Kennedy’s promise, America did not win the race to the moon. However, John Glenn did orbit Earth three times that year in the spacecraft Friendship 7; Albert Sabin licensed the oral polio vaccine; Kmart, Wal-Mart and Target eased upon the American landscape to define a new way of shopping. My favorite writer William Faulkner died that year, and so did Norma Jean Mortenson, better known as cultural icon and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe. The Civil Rights Movement was evolving after 1955 when a group of white men beat a black boy, Emmett Till, to death and threw his body into the Tallahatchie River in Money, Mississippi. The movement gained momentum when they arrested Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were yet to come; therefore, America remained greatly divided along the color line.

It was 1962. I was participating in a rite of passage designed to propel me into the adventures, challenges and joys of adulthood. I had been staying in Memphis and attending high school for two years, and I thought I had one more summer to spend in Somerville before I moved on. All I wanted to hear was my name called so I could quickly walk up and receive my diploma from those people I would not miss. Both Mommy and Daddy were there sitting together as if they were a couple; I was anxious to get the formalities over and collect my gifts. After everything ended, I hurried to the designated classroom and flung my gown onto the black pile, silently promising to never step foot inside that building again. With that, I closed the door on my carefree days and opened another to the uncertain, but desired future that lay ahead.

Once the opportunity for me to earn some money came across Mommy’s radar, she contacted the right person; and before I had a chance to spend a few mornings sleeping late and a few lazy afternoons reading True Confession, I had joined the workforce. My mother believed in putting us to work when we were old enough to walk and pick up our toys. We worked in the house, the garden and later the fields. She wanted no one around who wasn’t working. When there was a paycheck at the end of the week that made it even better. Our uncle, we called Brother, was a farmer and raised many different crops. Daily, Mommy ushered the boys off to Brother’s fields to plow, chop or hoe cotton, okra, soybeans or some other crop. I had been responsible for the domestic chores including cooking; however, all that changed when Mommy realized there could be money if I did the same work for someone else. Sure, she would miss my free labor that summer, but she would make do as long as I was earning a paycheck.

I felt trapped, caught up in a plan I did not know was in the making. The summer of 1962 was supposed to be my last summer of freedom. However, I wouldn’t get to spend hot summer nights sitting in the theater crunching popcorn, slurping orange soda and living vicariously through the actors who paraded across the silver screen.

My brother Malcolm and I had spent many nights at the Fair Theater in previous summers. It was my place to escape the heat of an un-air-conditioned house. We would sit in the balcony, the place designated for black patrons, and sometimes contemplate what would happened if we let a cup of soda pop flip over onto the patrons below. Malcolm was the mischievous sort who could have easily done that if given some encouragement. Both of us knew better.

In the theater, I could visit faraway places, like Egypt during the time of Moses, in the Ten Commandments. On the other hand, I could see other parts of the United States such as New York City, and imagine myself singing and dancing alongside Natalie Wood and Rita Moreno in West Side Story. For only twenty cents, I could see a world very different from mine. Nevertheless, my favorite summer activity would have to wait because the world of work was demanding my participation. It would be another year before I would enjoy the antics of Scout and Jem in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Although published in 1960 and already an academy award winning movie, I had not read the book. I had it on my reading list for the summer of 1962.

Spending summers in the country was difficult for me during my teen years. I would escape through reading any kind of romantic magazine and comics I could get at the Rexall Drug Store. I didn’t know that my time reading such was about to end abruptly.

Off to Memphis I went to live in as the help for a young woman I will refer to as Miss Ann. She hired me to provide care for her two-year-old daughter Missy. Miss Ann was not a professional or a single mother who needed to work, but like many southern white women during that time, she enjoyed the services of a maid, or a nanny, or both. She was not the typical Southern Belle or lady of leisure. She didn’t lunch with the girls or shop. Neither did she do charity work. She did not read or have a hobby. Miss Ann simply was not into mothering or cleaning. Sometimes she would help Mr. G with his houses. He was a contractor and her lover who, much to my displeasure, also lived there. I didn’t like the idea of living with him, but I only learned of that arrangement after I had accepted the job. I think if Mommy had known, she wouldn’t have let me take the job.

Miss Ann hired me as a nanny, but I soon became victim of the old bait and switch. In a short time, I was chief cook and bottle washer. That is to say, I was the maid, cook, shopper, laundress, hairdresser, bartender and chauffer. It didn’t take Miss Ann long to discover that I had skills, and that I was willing to learn others. All that cooking, cleaning and laundry I had done at home had prepared me well. Miss Ann showed me what I didn’t know such as how to polish silver and clean carpet. We would get down on our knees with a soft brush and scrub the light beige carpet together. I was not fond of carpet cleaning or polishing silver, which I did every two weeks; however, I enjoyed the gleam of the silver and looked forward to the day I would have my own.

Miss Ann was particular about how she wanted things done. It was no different with her laundry, especially her undergarments, which she wanted me to wash by hand. That was where I drew the line. I put those delicate items right into the washer with the rest of the clothes, and she was none the wiser. She sent me to the liquor store, which was in walking distance, to buy vodka, vermouth and Burgundy wine until the store manager looked at me on about the third trip and asked, How old are you?

I didn’t know why he was asking, but I answered proudly, I’m seventeen.

"Well, you gonna have to stop coming here gitin’ liquor. You underage. What’s your boss lady’s telephone number?"

I gave him the number and he called Miss Ann while I waited.

"Ma’am, I’m the manager at the liquor store. You gonna have to stop sendin’ this girl here to get liquor. I cain’t be selling to nobody under twenty-one. I’m gonna let her have it this time, but I cain’t do it again." With a quick phone call, my trips to the liquor store ended. I could strike that chore off my list.

Miss Ann was a little disappointed that I could no longer get liquor, but it was not long before she realized I could drive her to the store, and she could run in and get it.

At first, I felt like Milberry in Langston Hughes’ short story Berry, that I was being imposed upon in that taken-for-granted way white folks do with Negro help.

Miss Ann was a perfectionist, which worked well for me. I liked the idea of order and beauty. She wanted everything in her environment to be in perfect order--her home, her clothing and appearance, as well as her daughter and her meals. Miss Ann’s apartment looked like a spread from House and Garden Magazine. I got a sense of arranging a home attractively because of Miss Ann. I took much from her that I would later incorporate into my lifestyle. She was a good cook. I think she enjoyed the few times she joined me in the kitchen. I loved the taste of Italy in her use of garlic, oregano and olive oil.

One time we were making crab cakes and one of them fell apart. She said, Throw that out. It’s not right. Get rid of it. It wasn’t shaped perfectly and didn’t hold together right. I grabbed it and looked at her to see if she was serious. I reluctantly threw it in the trashcan thinking how Mommy would never throw away good food.

When Miss Ann sent me to Montesi’s Supermarket to get steaks, she would say, Tell the butcher to cut them exactly two inches thick. Her instructions on how to prepare them for the grill were, Rub them with olive oil, split open a fresh garlic clove and rub it on the steaks, and then sprinkle salt and black pepper on them.

Mr. G would grill them so they were charred on the outside and bloody in the center. They smelled delicious, but that bloody meat was such a turnoff that on those nights Missy and I would eat tuna or chicken.

The twice-baked potatoes had to be perfect in shape and color. Miss Ann showed me how to rub olive oil and a fresh garlic clove inside the wooden salad bowl to season it before I filled it with lettuce, perfectly sliced green peppers, carrots, red onions and ripe tomatoes. With that fare, they would have Burgundy wine served at room temperature. I would have set the table with good china, crystal and cloth napkins. No matter the menu, the table setting would be exquisite, elegant and inviting.

Shortly after I arrived, Miss Ann told me to make two BLTs and bring them to the bedroom. I said, Yes ma’am, and into the kitchen I went to look for a box or a bag with BLT on it. First, I looked in the cabinets, and then I looked in the refrigerator. I couldn’t find anything with BLT on it. So after a long search, somewhat embarrassed, I knocked on her bedroom door and asked unapologetically, Miss Ann, what is a BLT?

She said, Bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. She probably had wondered why she wasn’t enjoying the aroma of bacon frying.

I should have known that, I thought. I felt stupid for a minute, but Miss Ann didn’t respond with sarcasm or act as if I should have known. Therefore, I got over my embarrassment, went back to the kitchen and fried the bacon to the right crispness, sliced the tomatoes, washed and dried the lettuce and toasted the white bread to perfection. When I presented the sandwiches on a silver tray, Miss Ann smiled and offered a simple thank you. I left smiling because it was then that I knew I had the ability to do the job well. I felt obligated to do well to please Mommy, and I didn’t want to let down the woman who was instrumental in my getting the job.

The first time Miss Ann told me to make a Bloody Mary and Martini, I had no idea what they were. Daddy drank whiskey, and I had seen homemade wine during Christmas at my grandparents’ home. Beer was common enough. I knew nothing about cocktails. Miss Ann told me exactly how much gin and vermouth to pour for the Martini, how many olives to add and the proper glasses to use. The Bloody Mary was more complicated. It contained vodka, tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, lemon, hot sauce, and a stalk of celery for garnish. Neither drink enticed me; therefore, I never tasted them. Miss Ann gave good instructions, and I followed them exactly. I enjoyed doing those tasks more than I enjoyed taking care of Missy because I felt more grownup.

Miss Ann paid me $25.00 each week. She would sign the check, and I would write it.

The average salary at that time was $5,500.00 a year, but I think this didn’t include the salaries of African Americans. At any rate, I was way below average. I also wrote checks to the grocery, drug store, liquor store, the landlord, and for whatever else she needed. I learned fast. She would sign the checks and send me on my way. Her rent for the luxury apartment was $375.00 per month. The average rent in America in 1962 was $110.00 per month. Again, I don’t think black people were included in that statistic.

Young professionals such as pilots, stewardesses, nurses and some older people with money lived in the complex, which encircled a courtyard with a pool as its centerpiece. It was exclusive.

One afternoon as I was going across the courtyard around the pool to the laundry room, I saw some high school girls laughing, talking, and slathering on suntan lotion. They looked at me as if I had drunk from the white only water fountain or entered the whites only waiting room. I was also curious about them. After all, I lived there and they didn’t. They had come to visit someone in the complex so they could get some sun and swim. As I passed, one girl asked, How old are you?

I’m seventeen.

We thought you were older.

They were giddy girls who wore too much makeup and red lipstick and had nothing more to do than lounge around the pool laughing and talking and enjoying their leisure. I, on the other hand, was slaving from dawn until dark, enjoying no leisure, not even reading or watching television. I guessed that their maids were older women with husbands and children of their own who had decided to make caring for white people their vocation. So perhaps they thought it odd that someone near their age would be doing such work.

To add to my more mature status I said, I’ll be going to college in the fall.

That pronouncement caused them to look at me with a bit of awe and maybe a little respect and envy. I smiled as I hurried off with the laundry basket to the sounds of Chubby Checker singing The Twist on the transistor while leaving them to wonder why a Negro girl was even thinking about going to college. Marriage was the goal for many white girls after high school in the 1950s and early 1960s.

I have fond memories of the people who lived near Miss Ann. They were nice to me, not at all condescending. They didn’t live or act like southerners and were to me avant-garde. I think they had come from California. I was glad to meet white people who didn’t fit the stereotypical southern way of being where matters of color and race were concerned. They and Miss Ann are the reason I didn’t lump all white people together and judge them as being prejudiced. My early interactions with them allowed me to relate well to other white people and to enjoy many good relationships over the years, from Nashville to Charleston, Louisville, Mobile and Atlanta.

I found it uplifting that white people who visited or lived in Europe for a time had a broader worldview that made them more accepting of other groups. Many of those who remained stateside held onto their southern traditions,